we've a lot of starving faithful
by BerryliciousCheerio
Summary: Clarke Griffin has a body count. The white queen falls. / (or: clarke just killed a boy. a study in guilt)


**well that ep was...dandy**

**disclaimed**

* * *

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There is a certain poetry about blood on your hands.

**...**

(bellamy holds your wrists when he guides you back to camp. the princess's crown has fallen)

**...**

You think that you have no right to mourn—

he was not yours and he is not yours to grieve over. He was not all you had.

But he is in your bones, his blood settled into the lines of your palms. You scrub them raw and they remain red. Your ghosts have a face, now—no longer shadows in the dark.

Atom never haunted you; you could never have saved him. But Finn. Finn you could have—

should have saved. Raven's sobs burn you—

you could hear her from the Grounder's encampment, from your place by his corpse, and it burned you then and it burns you now. You took—

you _took_. You took the only family she had, the only support that remained for the girl that fell. She's given you all so much and you _took _that from her.

**...**

(when she hits you, you do not flinch. it stings, but you had hoped it would _hurt_)

**...**

It is not a lie when you tell Bellamy that you could not lose him.

You can't.

You can't afford to.

You are hallucinating, the rational part of you says. You cannot lead your people, cannot save your people. What use are you, when your hands shake and you see a dead boy every twenty yards?

You do not think about the part of you that needs him close, needs him _breathing_ beside you for entirely selfish reasons.

**...**

(your heart beats in double time when you think of him, strung up and drained dry—his skin is a beautiful bronze and you would hate to see it go pale)

**...**

When you drank the moonshine, you had hoped it was poisoned.

You don't know what that says about you.

**...**

(your father once taught you to breathe. his lessons are foggy in your mind, and you think you have never missed him so much as now)

**...**

Guilt is a noose around your neck, tightening every time you face Raven—

even after she looks at you with something like forgiveness in her eyes, blood staining her clothes where she came so close to death, guilty of loving a boy that loved too much.

The punishment served to Gustus is brutal, agonizingly slow—

you think that you made the right choice, even when regret nips at your heels, claws at your hands. You were meant to be a doctor, meant to heal, but all you've done is destroy, is end.

The earth is not the only think that radiation ruined.

**...**

(you once thought that you were the white queen; you thought that you made the hard choices for the greater good. you sometimes laugh at how young you were, just weeks ago)

**...**

You didn't love him. You could have—

you almost did.

But there hadn't been time to fall completely, to sink into it. You were blushing and butterflies and sweaty palms, and you don't know what was supposed to come next. His and Raven's history was more important—

you understood the sanctity of history.

But he killed those people—

"_I found you_," he'd said, so reverently, reaching out to you and—

your mother loved your father. Finn loved you.

If this was love—

you want no part of it. His blood still stains your mind when Lexa tells you of Costia, of what she lost. _Love is a weakness,_ and you are not weak.

**...**

(bellamy's hands are calloused and gentle, hovering near yours. he is warm; stubborn and aggressive, passionate and steady. he is weak)

**...**

The living are hungry. You see it in Bellamy's face—

you want your people back, your kids.

There were fourteen year olds among them, baby faced still. Before the Grounder war, Bellamy had promised the two youngest boys how to shave, though their faces remained smooth. And Monty and Jasper—Miller, who stood beside you even when you questioned your own convictions.

You left them to die; the knowledge sits heavily on your shoulders. Weighs you down.

When you bathe in the river, you wish that you could drown.

**...**

(wells was your fault. charlotte. atom. anya. more. clarke griffin has a body count. the white queen falls)

**...**

Burn the weakness out. You tell Bellamy to go—

Lexa's words echo in your mind, but you say firmly, "_I was being weak,_" as if you are strong now. He will not understand the significance, but it's the closest you can come to a declaration.

Finn's mournful face stares at you from the shadows.

**...**

(_weak weak weak_)

**...**

The earth had seemed so beautiful from space. Isolated, stark.

In the deep black of Earth's night, you have never yearned for the stars more.

**...**

(you are weak. you should have offered yourself up in finn's place)

**...**

_**fin**_


End file.
